Doctors in some of the world’s less developed countries, including Nigeria, are being exploited by British healthcare companies, hiring them and making them work under conditions contradicting the UK laws, the BBC reported.
Many victims of Nigerian descent have been hired by NES Healthcare, a company which provides Resident Medical Officers, or RMOs - live-in doctors found mainly in the private sector. The Nigerian doctors working in British hospitals have claimed their working conditions were unbearable, on-call 24 hours a day for a week and unfair salary deductions.
As per the report, they received a file from the British Medical Association and "the front line lobbying group" the Doctors' Association that contained the results of polls of 188 Resident Medical Officers, 92% of whom were hired from Africa and 81% from Nigeria alone. The polls showed that the majority complained about unbearable schedules and salary deductions.
Femi Johnson, a doctor recruited by the NES, said that he was forced to work 14-16 hours a day while keeping in touch all night long. According to him, it was extremely difficult to take a day off, as it led to salary deductions, which the NES explained by the expenses for finding replacement doctors.
"I was burnt out," he said. "I was tired, I needed sleep. It's not humanly possible to do that every day for seven days."
Another NES doctor, Augustine Enekwechi, said working felt like “a prison” and was so exhausting that he worried for both himself and patients.
"I knew that working tired puts the patients at risk and puts myself also at risk, as well for litigation," he said. "I felt powerless… helpless, you know, constant stress and thinking something could go wrong."
The NES, in return, denied its involvement in “active recruitment," saying it had only helped doctors from abroad who had already committed to working in the UK.
According to the broadcaster, however, the doctors initially agreed to work hoping for "higher salaries and better working conditions." Enekwechi said that when the NES contacted him, he got so excited that he accepted the offer without reading it carefully.
A representative of the Doctors' Association, Jenny Vaughan, who has received many complaints from Resident Medical Officers, described their working conditions as servile.
"This is a slave-type work with… excess hours, the like of which we thought had been gone 30 years ago," she said.
Nevertheless, the NES denied the accusations, claiming it had always had “extremely positive” feedback from doctors and assured that it provided medical personal "with a safe and supportive route to pursue their career choice in the National Health Service, and in the UK healthcare system more generally”, saying the company’s work also benefited British society.